Stable Targeting Assistance for Ultrasound-Based Instrument Guidance

 描述(由申请人提供)：经皮超声成像正在成为一种越来越广泛的工具，覆盖了广泛的临床专科，部分地受到联邦指南的鼓励，甚至是强制要求。然而，进行这些手术所需的成像技能和手动灵活性并不容易获得，对许多临床医生来说，这对高效和有效的手术构成了巨大的挑战。拟议的项目旨在通过提供一种新的反馈方法来帮助操作员保持正确的探头和针头相对于临床目标的姿势，从而提高介入性超声的易用性和有效性。所提出的方法是一种图像稳定的形式，并且依赖于对探头相对于患者身体运动的探头上光学跟踪以及对超声图像中临床目标的表面下跟踪的发展。通过组合这两个信息源，可以计算使目标保持在视野中的最佳探测器移动的估计。然后，可以通过听觉或视觉渠道向用户提供反馈，但重要的是，还可以通过将在该项目中开发和测试的新型触觉反馈机制。一个成功的结果将使各种技能水平的临床医生在准确性和速度方面取得令人满意的结果，从而大大增加此类程序的可用性。我们在这个第二阶段项目中的工作将与麻醉师密切合作，他们代表了我们改进的反馈系统的主要用户群体。他们和其他临床医生将在拟议的工作开始时和整个过程中提供设计投入。我们希望开发一个上市前的原型，并在项目过程中将该系统分发给更广泛的医生。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Transcutaneous ultrasound imaging is becoming an increasingly widespread tool across a wide range of clinical specialties, partly encouraged or even mandated by federal guidelines. However, the imaging skill and manual dexterity necessary to perform these procedures is not easy to acquire, and pose a significant challenge to efficient and effective procedures for many clinicians. The proposed project aims to improve the ease of use and the effectiveness of interventional ultrasound by providing a novel feedback method that will assist operators to maintain correct probe and needle pose relative to a clinical target. The proposed method is a form of image stabilization, and relies on the development of on- probe optical tracking of probe motion relative to the patient body, as well as subsurface tracking of a clinical target in ultrasound images. By combining these two information sources, an estimate of the optimal probe movement to maintain the target in view can be computed. Feedback to the user can then be delivered through auditory or visual channels, but importantly also through a novel haptic feedback mechanism that will be developed and tested in this project. A successful outcome will substantially increase the availability of such procedures by allowing a wide range of clinicians of all skill levels achieve satisfying results in terms of accuracy and speed. Our work during this Phase II project will be in close collaboration with anesthesiologists who represent a prime user group for our improved feedback system. They and other clinicians will provide design inputs at the beginning and throughout the proposed work. We expect to develop a pre-market prototype and to distribute this system to a wider range of physicians in the course of the project.